I wrote earlier about not to look to get drowned in positive feedback. This is an extension of the same. Some of you sent me an email stating that negative feedback alone won’t help either. I agree.

Note: If you are someone who is always on your own and never bother to get feedback, the only advise I have is to go please get a life 🙂

Rest of us are surrounded by variety of people. Let me pick three types for the sake of this discussion.

Flatliners: They are extremely busy with their own work. They don’t have time to look at your idea or provide you feedback. They may say something like “Sounds good to me” or “Looks interesting”

Caring Critics: They really care for you and your projects. They are interested in you getting ahead. They honestly criticize the project keeping in mind the big picture of how this project will “affect you” in the grand scheme of things.

Non-caring Critics: They are not interested in the big picture of how this project will affect you and your life. Some of them may not even care for you really. You ask for feedback and you get it. In an extreme case, some of them might provide feedback that will hurt you in the long run.

You can ignore the first category of people when making decisions. Net caring Critic score is the difference between Caring Critics and Non-caring Critics. Here is the equation:

Net Caring Critic Score = Caring Critics – Non-caring Critics

Over the last few years, I have worked hard to keep this score positive and growing and it has helped me tremendously. This number is not easy to grow and you have to learn to build long-term relationshps. Most of your acquaintances and new friends will be in the first category as they just don’t want to tick you off.